1. Field of the Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), and more particularly, to limiting a content usage scope of a client by using metadata.
2. Description of the Related Art
Internet Protocol Televisions (IPTVs) indicate a communication and broadcasting convergence service which provides multimedia contents such as TV programs, video content, audio content, text content, and data services via an IP network such as a high-speed internet network of which the security and reliability are secured.
Additional information about multimedia contents, which are provided by various service providers, is provided via metadata. In general, metadata is defined as “data about data”. A standardizing work on a metadata format applicable for IPTVs is being conducted by the TV-Anytime forum (TVAF) which uses a multimedia description scheme that is defined by the Moving Picture Experts Group-7 (MPEG-7). The TVAF is an association of international broadcasting stations and international research institutes, and according to the TVAF, metadata can include not only basic content information, such as a broadcasting time, a title, a brief synopsis, main characters, and the like, which is included in an electronic program guide (EPG) of a related art digital broadcasting service, but also can include semantic content information such as content generation information, a content specification, a scene description, summary information, and the like.
Metadata used in IPTVs enables a user to scan and manage contents from various sources such as a broadcasting, a bi-directional TV, the Internet, and a local database. Metadata includes a user profile including search preferences that enables the user to conveniently perform automatic contents filtering and to obtain contents, components necessary for convenient searching for user desired contents, and information about content copyright, formats, use periods, and the like.
IPTVs provide functions such as Audio on Demand (AOD), Video on Demand (VOD), Content on Demand (COD), etc. A service provider transmits metadata in which information by which multimedia content is described, and a client scans multimedia contents by using the received metadata to access desired multimedia content. A content creator or the service provider pre-analyzes the information by which the multimedia content is to be provided, performs indexing to generate metadata, and provides the generated metadata to the client. In this manner, a user can scan a location of desired content by using metadata provided by an IPTV service provider server, can download the desired content from the scanned location, and can use the desired content.
Meanwhile, a content creator or a service provider may want to limit a usage authority of content downloaded by a user. For example, the content creator or the service provider may want to prevent the user from skipping advertisements which cover the cost for using free content, or may allow only a streaming reproduction of content and prevent the user from storing the content. However, related art IPTV technology has no means to satisfy such requirements of the content creator or the service provider.